Category Archives: Jesus not about safety.
A Universal Christ
Christianity is the most radical of all world religions
Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio focuses on the theology of the incarnation and the universal nature of the Christ mystery:
The Christian message is that God has become flesh [sarx in Greek or “matter”]—not a part of God or one aspect of God but the whole infinite, eternal God Creator has become matter. The claim—God has become flesh—is so radical that it is virtually unthinkable and illogical. Christianity is the most radical of all world religions because it takes matter seriously as the home of divinity. [1]
So does everyone have to become Christian to know the Christ? Absolutely not. Christ is more than Jesus. Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality—every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit, and human person. Everything is christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate. However, Jesus Christ is the “thisness” of God, so what Jesus is by nature everything else is by grace (divine love). We are not God, but every single person is born out of the love of God, expresses this love in [their] unique personal form, and has the capacity to be united with God…. Because Jesus is the Christ, every human is already reconciled with every other human in the mystery of the divine, so that Christ is more than Jesus alone. Christ is the whole of reality bound in a union of love.
We are transformed by experiencing the presence of Christ in all things.
Eileen: (And all people.)
I believe this. But find expressing it difficult without it becoming so complex that only theologians can “get” it. In the fifty-eight years since I experienced the incredible unconditional Love of God fleshed out in Jesus, my view of Jesus and Christianity has been expanded, rather than changed, until I realized that we have mostly missed the point of Jesus. Our importance is as a part of the whole…..we are part of God with God’s Spirit within us, but we limit the Spirit because of fear. Fear is literally the root of all evil. It’s the root of Musk’s need for power and my need for pleasure as escapes from the reality of our human vulnerability. We are fragile physical beings in a huge universe beyond even our understanding, never-the-less, our control. Unconsciously, we are all aware that the possibility of heartbreaking disaster lurks in the next minute. We do all we can to make this life pain free……our idea of heaven. We miss the point of Jesus. We want Him to be a “get out of this life’s possibility of being hell free” card. And we consider Him our key to the spiritual country club of escape from it. And we miss the point of both His life journey and His death as the prototype for ours. He grew spiritually. He became aware of the need to balance achievement with simple kindness through his mom. He was literally pushed into the increased danger of becoming known for doing miracles by His mom’s caring about a family’s social embarrassment. He was challenged over and over to love the least of these (lepers, tax collectors, fallen women, Roman Soldiers, people unwilling to help themselves, cowardly best friends, and the leaders of His own religion who had Him tortured and killed) and even God when He felt God had abandoned Him.
This life is not meant to be heaven. It is school. It is the journey from Self as number one, to being willing to lay down our lives for not only those who are different from us, but those that would kill us. That takes Growth through Grace with a capital G! Ultimately it takes a willingness to die to what we value most in our lives and ourselves.
This may not sound like the “good news,” but it’s a letting go that ultimately frees us from the fear that controls and corrupts us, so that we can ultimately Love all others unconditionally.
Accepting Jesus as Savior Takes a Minute. Accepting Jesus as Lord Takes a Lifetime.
I want to explain something about having a relationship with Jesus and about saying the prayer accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord.
For me, as an agnostic, it was a new beginning. Jesus became both a partner with His life as a guide, and a presence as a source of God’s Love that is the grace to grow more loving all along life’s spiritual journey.
I began to recognize the pattern Jesus had of opening up to more and more people as those Loved by God…..until it included not just good Jews, but the Jews that used the power of the enemy government to get rich, the slut at the well, the guy at the pool who wouldn’t help himself, Soldiers of the hated enemy government, his closest friends who abandoned Him, and even the Jews that thought they had a monopoly on God and were instrumental in his torture and death. And as He died, Jesus chose to trust God even when He felt abandoned by Him.
Jesus fleshed out both the Love of God for ALL of us and the WAY for us to become Loving. That Love is the grace for us to grow more loving every inch of the way until we die.
I don’t know what God is… I don’t know what heaven is. Sometimes I’ve felt like this life was hell. But I do know we are all different and have different limits. I’m not sure we all die loving like Jesus, because we are not dealt the same hand. We only have to play the hand we were dealt the best we can with the grace of that Love. I cannot judge ANYONE, even myself. At 88, I’ve realized that I wasn’t dealt as great a hand as I thought I was. But I’m still here, so I’ve got more growing to do. Sometimes when I see really GOOD people suffer horribly, it mirrors Jesus to me. Maybe they love enough to bear what the weaker people they love couldn’t. I don’t know. NO one knows! If we think we know the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, we are claiming to be equal to God. Being human is living and, even by the measure of perfection, dying unfinished.
We want so badly to feel safe, and we think either worldly power/riches or religion will guarantee it. This life is not about safety or perfection. It’s a journey from our own NEEDING to LOVING. Some of us are born better at it than others. It’s a personal journey, so some of us need more grace than others. Some of us, like me, even need miracles among the heartbreaks. It’s a JOURNEY of learning to LOVE like Jesus did to the best of the grace we are given. Though the journey varies from person to person, groups of us start out more like each other than others. The challenge isn’t getting to heaven, it’s becoming the loving person God created us uniquely to be. And often our failures are in what we DON’T do, because of limiting our love to only people like ourselves. And that includes both conservatives and liberals in any society.
I KNOW I am LOVED, but that doesn’t mean I’m perfect or will ever be perfect. And the same goes for every single child of God. I know that by the pattern of the life and death and Love fleshed out in Jesus.
Is Our Suffering Redemptive for Others?
To me the root of sin is fear. We dull fear with pleasure and we try to fight it with power. And human power is an illusion…..as Adam and Eve found out. A tiny, microscopic germ can wipe us out. The question of why the good suffer is confusing. Perhaps accepting suffering and trusting the grace of God to get us through it is somehow redemptive not just for us, but possibly for those that don’t get it together with God until the last minute or even until they see God. This may be wishful thinking on my part because of being the matriarch of five generations, some of whom don’t seem to be getting it together with or without God in a world that is increasingly scary. Perhaps our suffering somehow helps those we love unconditionally. Perhaps like Jesus, we can say, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” If we who are imperfect can hurt for them and forgive, surely a God who is Love does.
The “Guts” of my Faith
Trying to kind of sum up my faith and understanding of the spiritual in life.
Is there something/someone worth calling God? Yes! Why do I believe this? Because I’ve experienced unexplainable timing miracles over and over in my life and because when I separated Jesus from any religion, it became clear that Jesus fleshed out these things: 1. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE; 2. that we ALL are loved: and we are ALL created and called to love one another(even our enemy) just as WE are loved. 3. God’s essence (Spirit) is in everything and everyone if we are open to it. We are an essential part of the whole, but we individually are not equal to the whole. 4. Life, both as individuals and as humanity, is a school for the spiritual journey of evolution in loving, and we are learning to love still on the day we die. 5. We are not all dealt the same hand, so it is impossible to judge how well anyone is playing their hand. Only God knows that. 6. No person or group has all the truth and nothing but the truth. 7. We are part of God and God is part of us, but we are not the whole. 8.The Scriptures are letters from God written by people in earlier and more primitive cultures, but we hear God through the Scriptures with the understanding of the culture we are living in. with its differences AND its limits. 9.Truth and fact are not the same. Some Scriptures teach truth through metaphorical stories. The details are not facts, but the truth they are illustrating is real. 10. Jesus FLESHED out not only the Love of God for all humanity, but also the stages of growing into Loving as God Loves. His WAY is our WAY. He is the witness that we unfinished human beings can grow from the selfishness of an infant’s needs to the freedom to Love others more than ourselves, even those who seem to be our enemies, but who play a crucial part in our growing free to Love. 11. We not only can love our enemy, but choose to trust God when we feel abandoned just as Jesus ultimately did on his cross. 12.This life is not all there is. 13. Jesus as a person in History is not the only way to learning to love as God loves. But Jesus has definitely been my personal way, so I that is what I have to share.
At 87 I am still on my personal journey so may understand more tomorrow, but will not know it all in this life, just my God given personal potential through the grace of being loved. I pray for people, even those connected to cars broken down on the highway this way: “God, be with that person and their loved ones. Give them the grace they need physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to become the person you created them to be. I ask this in Jesus’ name, who fleshed our Your love for us. Amen.”
Jesus Chose Love Over Power
Jesus chose love over power. And paid the price. Jesus fleshed out the Love of God. That was his WAY and the WAY we are called to also.
The early world of dog eat dog, of the fallen get left behind, of only the physically strong survive began to evolve into partnerships, into family, into tribe, into country, now into world, and soon into universe. It grows past hunter/gatherer to social networks of different skills working for the whole. Eventually we will all need each other across our differences, in fact because of our differences.
In our current world we often see greed as the root of all evil, but greed is just a way to power and power is still seen as safety.
Jesus was not about safety. Jesus lay down his life. He chose to be vulnerable even knowing the consequences. Because he knew that death was not the end. And survival is not the goal. Love is.
Jesus being fully human and fully divine is a paradox and our minds don’t deal with paradoxes well.
The problem for us is identifying with both. Divine implies bigger than life. And the human Jesus showed us what that means in the resurrection. Being human doesn’t mean bad or evil. It means “unfinished.” We come into the world dependent and needy and greedy. With the grace of knowing there is more than survival and pleasure we can become able to love, to value ourselves and others equally because life is not about personal survival but about humanity becoming Love which is Divine.
Humanity has the seed of the Divine within …….the Spirit of God , of Love. Like the fig tree we can yield the fruit of that Spirit. But it’s a spiritual journey from need to Love and that takes the grace of being Loved. And that’s where Jesus comes in. The journey of life is a hard one with hard choices and without the grace of knowing Love up close and personal it’s impossible. But we are different from one another from birth, so the journey won’t be exactly the same for us. But it is always a journey from need to Love.
For me that has been graced by knowing that imperfect and unfinished as I am, I am Loved by the creator of all , the whole, the great I AM and Jesus fleshed both that Love and the WAY , (the choices) to become Loving out for me.
I don’t personally think a creator, a father, a mother, would only have one way of loving and giving grace to love, so billions of their children would never know that Love. But for me it has been Jesus. I could not have come this far without that grace of being known and Loved. I don’t think we come into the world equal in ability, opportunity, freedom, cultures, so we are not cookie cutter children of God. Each of us comes with different strengths and weaknesses; physical, mental, emotional, situational, cultural, etc. which is what makes judging impossible.
The seed of the Spirit is in us. What awakens it and strengthens it will differ, like with Cornelius and his family. No one has a monopoly on God or grace. We can share our source of Grace, such as Jesus, but unless we Love like Jesus, it will not find soft fertile ground.
Scripture contradicts itself, such as the difference in the Gospel accounts of Jesus carrying or needing help carrying His Cross. The Gospel of John says Jesus did not need help carrying His cross. When I first hit a time when I felt I simply could not go on, I opened to the story of Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry his cross and realized some times we all need help and got an immediate phone call offering the help I needed. Years later when feeling overwhelmed again by circumstances, I opened to the Gospel of John that said Jesus carried his own cross and heard that as God telling me that now His grace was sufficient. And it was.
The Spirit speaks to us through the Scriptures in different ways at different times in our journeys. Do not make a God of one part of Scripture. Our personal journey’s from need to Love are different from each other’s and even at different times in our own lives. Jesus’s life is the WORD of God fleshed out for us and different people at different times need to hear different things. Do not set a Scripture in Stone and make a God of it.
Ultimately, each day has challenges to grow in Love in our own personal journey. But not necessarily in the same way as our parents, our pastor, or our best friend, but always in one of the ways and choices that Jesus made sometimes through tears, heartbreak, frustration, and even anger…..but ending with Love. “Father, forgiven them. They know not what they do.”
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 